Inmates can be prematurely freed from jail for a range of reasons, such as mistaken identities, errors in legal documents, miscalculated sentences and confused release dates.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
As the Ontario government faces questions about accidentally freeing inmates from jail, experts say mistaken releases are a persistent problem that reflect known shortcomings in the corrections system.
Premier Doug Ford’s government has been under pressure from opposition parties over news that 157 inmates were wrongly released from provincial custody over the past five years.
Earlier this week, Mr. Ford called the mistaken releases “totally unacceptable” and corrected Solicitor-General Michael Kerzner, who had assured the public all the inmates had been apprehended. In fact, six of the inmates are still on the loose, Mr. Ford said.
No more inmates will be improperly released from Ontario jails, Ford says
Mr. Kerzner, who has apologized for the mistake, said Thursday that the government is adopting new technology to minimize such errors.
“It happens everywhere,” said Lorna Poplak, who wrote a book about prison escapes. “In these cases, somebody slipped up or the system slipped up. But one way or another, these people were let out mistakenly and they’re on the lam.”
The Ontario government has declined to provide details on how long the six inmates have been at large, the reasons they were wrongly released, the charges they face and whether they have been convicted.
Inmates can be prematurely freed from jail for a range of reasons, including mistaken identities, errors in legal documents, miscalculated sentences and confused release dates.
Accidental releases – or walkaways, as they’re also known – are more common in provincial jails than in federal prisons, according to experts. Most provincial inmates are awaiting trial and must be transferred to court for hearings.
Justin Piché, a University of Ottawa criminology professor, said there’s “a lot of movement in and out of the system and more potential for mistakes to be made.”
Transferring inmates between Ontario’s jails and courthouses involves two ministries with different systems and “inconsistent” information sharing, said Howard Sapers, former federal correctional investigator who is now executive director of the non-profit Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“Believe it or not, there’s not always a really good handoff of information or really good and timely information sharing between what happens in court and what happens in a jail,” he said.
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In addition, Mr. Sapers said chronic understaffing in Ontario jails contributes to erroneous releases.
“It’s a very, very, very busy system and intake and discharge is very labour-intensive. And so if you’re busy, you’re understaffed, you’re stressed, you’ve got a never-ending lineup of people who have to be processed either in or out, it’s just that mistakes are going to happen.”
Chad Oldfield, corrections chair for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said understaffing and lower wages contribute to “constant onboarding and training” of new workers.
He said jail guards process hundreds of inmates’ court appearances and transfers each day across the province.
“At the end of the day, every release from a correctional institution has a final review and sign off by a manager,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Sapers said the Ontario government could address the problem of inmates who are accidentally released from custody by increasing corrections staffing levels and updating information management computer systems.
“They’re all known problems and they can all be fixed,” he said.
The Ford government is planning to spend billions of dollars to build more jails to add capacity to the system.
The Correctional Service of Canada said it could not provide data on accidental releases from federal prisons because it “does not systematically track it in a centralized database,” according to spokesman Kevin Antonucci.
“We rarely see incorrect releases happen. In the event that it does happen, we have protocols in place to take immediate action and work closely with police to locate the individual and implement all necessary measures to address the situation,” he said in a statement.
Ontario government data released in response to a freedom of information request revealed that 157 inmates were improperly released between 2021 and September, 2025, Global News reported last week.
In Quebec, more than 200 inmates – including violent offenders – were freed early from provincial jails by mistake in a recent eight-year period, The Globe and Mail reported in 2023.
With a report from Patrick White